Free Platinum by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Nowly?
    The truth was that this wasn’t exactly the kind of situation you could buy a Hallmark card for. It wasn’t something that could be fixed with a mani, a pedi, and some down-and-dirty girl-talk or by letting Brock massage my shoulders or jam his tongue down my throat the way he always did if we made out for more than three minutes at a time.
    “I’m not calling anyone because I don’t want to talk to anyone,” I said firmly. Even without Lexie standing there shaking her head morosely at me, I knew I was lying to myself. Once upon a time, I’d been good enough at it that I’d barely even noticed, but the last twenty-four hours had forced me to the realization that the identity I’d made for myself was coming dangerously close to cracking and falling away.
    The Lilah I’d made wouldn’t have been in this position, because she was the master of her own destiny.
    Fuchsia would have been too scared of that Lilah to even think about looking at Brock. In fact, that Lilah would have Non-ed any Golden girl who’d sat anywhere near Brock’s lap, and she would have blacklisted any Non who’d walked out on her. She wouldn’t have enjoyed doing it, but the Lilah I’d created when I was in the sixth grade would have done it all without a second thought, just to survive.
    What had happened to me?
    “’Twas my shield.” I heard the woman before I saw her, and even though I closed my eyes against the vision, the scene played out against the backdrop of my eyelids.
    “Your shield,” Lissy said, repeating the woman’s words. Lissy’s hair was calmer, darker, her skin glowing white, but even that unearthly shine paled in comparison to the woman next to her, who spoke again without even moving her red lips.
    “The sign of my heart. The heart of my line.”
    “The heart of my line.” I shook my head. Was there supposed to be any rhyme or reason to these visions? The ones about Mystery Boy I could understand, and the ones from my own past weren’t completely mystifying, but why was I seeing Lissy? Who was the woman she was talking to? Why couldn’t I convince myself that I really, truly did not care?
    I forced myself to turn the cell over in my hand and scrolled through the phone book, pausing every once in a while. Eighty-nine names later, I still hadn’t found anyone worth calling, so instead I took on the all-important task of staring at my shoes. They were nice shoes: strappy and pink and high-enough-heeled that I was almost tall. Tracy had bought the same pair in white after the pink ones had passed my fashion approval.
    As I kept my eyes on my shoes, my vision blurred, not because I was seeing something supernatural, but because I was staring at my feet so hard that I didn’t even blink.
    When life gives you lemons, stare at your shoes, I thought dully.
    My phone vibrated in my hands, and I wiped the water out of my eyes to get a good look at the caller ID: blocked.
    A blocked ID meant one of three things: (a) It was my mom, whose cell didn’t show up as having a number, (b) Someone was purposefully blocking their ID so I couldn’t screen their calls, or (c) Brock was calling from his landline. I weighed the options as the phone numbed my hand.
    “Hello.” I didn’t actually decide to answer. It just happened.
    “Babes, I am sooooooooo sorry.”
    I only knew one person who said the word “so” with that many “o’s”: Fuchsia, which meant that she was (a) calling from my mom’s phone (unlikely), (b) blocking caller ID because she knew I wouldn’t want to talk to her, or (c)…
    There was no C. I wasn’t that far off my game.
    “Sorry about what?” I asked coolly.
    “I heard about your mom,” Fuchsia said. Sometimes this town was way too small. “Can you even say traumatic? Doesn’t she know this kind of thing can scar you for life?”
    “It’s not like she’s peeling the flesh from my bones,” I said dryly, and a second later, it occurred to me that, given my current situation,